Updates You Should Know

• The payment deadline for Travel Guide Listings has been extended to December 15, 2020. We know that budgets are being examined closely, so we have extended the payment deadline for 2021 Travel Guide listings by almost 6 months.  The deadline for submitting your listings still remains the same, June 15, 2020. The early-bird rate for submitting your listings is open now.  All prices, deadlines and instructions are available on TravelKS.com. If you have questions, please email Andrea.

• Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism and the Travel Industry Association of Kansas hosted the third Kansas Tourism Industry COVID-19 Virtual Meeting on Wednesday, featuring representatives from the Department of Commerce. You can find the recording here.

• We will continue hosting this meeting weekly over the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. Please feel free to share the recordings or to invite other stakeholders to participate in the calls. While the virtual meeting is capped at 250 participants, we will continue to release the recording shortly after. The details for next week's meeting are as follows:

• Topic: Tourism & Hospitality Industry COVID 19 weekly update - We'll have a legislative update from TIAK and a "Marketing in the Time of COVID-19" presentation by Bajillion Agency

Time: Apr 22, 2020 01:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada) 
Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/144561519
Meeting ID: 144 561 519
One tap mobile+13462487799,,144561519#

• The Attraction Development Grant timeline will continue as scheduled. Please continue to submit applications before the April 30th deadline.

Sunshine in the Sunflower State

• Visit Abilene's Abilene Strong Campaign. With everything from word scrambles, social distancing trivia and, most importantly, finding ways to support local businesses, Abilene Strong has been a community unifier.  

• Visit Kansas City Kansas has some great marketing materials they have released over the last few weeks. Check out 5 Ways to Support Kansas City Kansas Businesses, coloring pages and recipe videos featuring local products.

Preparing for Travelers

• Take advantage of our free marketing webinars! There's over 350 hours of educational content waiting for you. 
•  Now is also the perfect time to earn your Kansas Destination Specialist certification from TIAK! We are encouraging our staff to pursue this designation and would encourage those who also may not have it yet to do the same. 
• A survey of travelers done by Destination Analysts... We aren't sure the demographics of those who were surveyed, but the data is interesting. Small towns and rural species are the second most popular "First Destination Post-Pandemic". 

Things You Can Do  

• Travel Information Centers (TICs) are gearing up for when travel returns. If your location has any new brochures or updated their brochures, now would be a great time to get them approved and sent to the TIC's. 
• We encourage you to update your local listings as you are able. The great thing about our extranet is you can access it from anywhere, so it's a good item to work on if you are working remotely. Our website provider also launched a new feature that allows extranet users to update business information in regard to the crisis. You are now able to add things like 'Temporarily Closed', 'Offers Delivery', 'Offers Take-Out' and more to show what options are still available (or not) in your community. Now is also a great time to get comfortable in using our extranet. You can find our extranet training center here.
• Please make sure you are a member of the Kansas Tourism Industry Facebook Group. This will be the easiest, quickest way we can reach out to industry members over the next two weeks. 
• Continue to let us know the impact of cancellations and lost business in your community.
• Continue to update events on the TravelKS.com websites as more cancellations or reschedulings roll in.
• Continue to monitor your social media postings and website updates during this time. If there is a question about whether something is appropriate for the circumstances, please air on the side of caution.